January 2017 Newsletter

January 2017 Newsletter

Wish you a Very Happy New Year 2017!

We have delivered some awesome features through last year enabling Hybrid Cloud scenarios, starting from integrations with top Cloud and Virtualization platforms, Backup service, to taking care of some basics like Role Based Access Control (RBAC), Consistent experience, Bulk Provisioning and Customer Signup and approval workflows. All with full self-service and extensible automation support, which reduces IT support and management cost, making the ROI very attractive. Summary of available features and what is coming soon in this new year:

VConnect for Windows Azure Pack

Summary of VConnect Features Shipped in 2016

The VConnect platform for Windows Azure Pack delivered many new cloud integrations and innovative features for Service Providers and Enterprises in the year 2016. Some of the innovations delivered include: Role Based Access Control (RBAC), IT Process Automation with Operations Templates, IT Support Automation with Wizard driven Custom Commands, System Center, VMware vCenter, AWS, Azure Platform support, Inline Backup as a Service with Veaam and fine grained control for Administrators with various extensibility points and available customizations.

Here is the complete list:

Yearly Licensing Model

VConnect can now be licensed in Yearly Subscription based licensing model, apart from the Perpetual license model. A Subscription-based licensing model enables SMB Enterprises and start up Hosting Service Providers to align the licensing costs as part of their annual budgets.

New integrations: Tenants can provision and manage across all platforms using a single-pane of glass experience

Azure Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services

System Center / VMM

Azure Stack (TP2 Beta)

Group Resources and Provide Fine Grained Access Control

Use Resource Groups to manage VMs as groups, and provide fine grain Access Control

Tenants can group and manage a set of VMs as Resource Groups (e.g., Test, Prod, Staging)

Tenant Administrators can use Resource Group Access Control to enable fine grain access (e.g., Owner, Contributor, Reader) for Subscription Co-Administrators by integrating with Active Directory groups

Configure Network Name and Type in the connection Networks tab, and thereby map to a Plan

Configure WINS entries as part of IP Pool management or using custom Operations Templates

Configure the # of cores per socket by adding a NumCoresPerSocket parameter to VM Templates

Force delete VMs that are not allowed to be deleted from Tenant portal

Make VM root folder configurable at Plan level

Configure the folder in which VMs will be placed in vCenter, rather than the default root folder

Specify the path to the folder containing custom Operations templates, in the Connection Wizard, enabling VMs to be provisioned based on custom templates instead of the default templates

VM Deployments Enhancements

Admins can force retry of any deployment step from Admin Portal

Tenants get visibility into VM Deployment workflow operation steps

Security

Encryption of all secure data in VConnect DB

Other improvements:

Performance improvements: e.g., Disconnecting the Session in the PowerShell scripts: this addresses a potential memory leak issue wherein several idle sessions were not getting cleared in the VConnect API Service machine.

Support for dependent fields in VM templates enables admins to create conditional drop-down fields in the VM provisioning UI

Display CPU and Memory details for Compute Instances in the Resource Template wizard

Enable disk usage records generation for VConnect VMs

More in the works...

Usage & Billing for Windows Azure Pack

Summary of Usage & Billing Features Shipped in 2016

The Usage and Billing solution for Windows Azure Pack based Cloud Cost Charge Back and Show Back delivered many practical features for Service Providers and Enterprises in the year 2016. Notable features include: Customer sign-up and approval workflow, Payment Gateway integration, custom branded web Market Place with unlimited options to deliver unique Offers, reliable Agent services, near real-time metrics aggregation, costing and reporting, Invoice improvements, various Alert Rules and automation options.

Here is the complete list:

Yearly and Monthly Licensing Models

Usage and Billing can now be licensed in Yearly and Monthly Subscription based licensing models, apart from the Perpetual license model.

Subscription licensing models enable SMB Enterprises and start up Hosting Service Providers to budget the licensing costs as an ongoing operational expense rather than a capital expense.

It’s a hybrid cloud world, and Cloud Assert wants to ease their customers to automate all their workloads, deliver unified cloud management and DevOps experience across the hybrid clouds with agility and confidence.

It’s a hybrid cloud world, and Cloud Assert wants to ease their customers to automate all their workloads, deliver unified cloud management and DevOps experience across the hybrid clouds with agility and confidence.